A brief history...

Welcome Computer Systems Ltd is a classic British software start-up company.  From a one-man-band in an attic in 1984,  there are now 15 of us (plus a dog), based in the friendly Northamptonshire village of Spratton.

Our original product was a hotel booking system running on Apricot personal computers, which were the best desktop solution of the day; 256K of RAM and a 10Mb disk drive was enough to manage a 66 bedroom hotel, including telephone call logging.  By the time we moved into our current offices in 1989, we had over 100 hotels all over the UK with multi-user systems interfacing with many different types of switchboards and tills.

The present Managing Director, Nick Chudley, and Operations Director, Sam Wright have been at the heart of the business since the beginning. 

Nick was the aforementioned one-man-band whose qualifications for the job included a degree in Maths with Management Science from Manchester University and 6 years running the family conference centre business, Highgate House, which is now part of the Sundial Group run by Nick’s brother and two sisters. 

Sam started with Welcome straight from school and did her degree the hard way at night school.  As Welcome has grown, Sam has stayed ahead and now has overall responsibility for our projects team, headed by Cliff Lee, and support team, headed by Mark Hurt. 

With our Sales Director, Mark Ellis and Technical Director, Chris Preedy we have a management team with experience, youthful energy and recent education in the mix.  An essential element of perspective is introduced by our non-executive chairman, Stan Patey, who contributes a tremendous breadth of knowledge of business activity to our board meetings.

It would be fair to say that we are happy in our work and very optimistic about the future.  Our highest priorities have always been to try our best to keep customers satisfied and to provide the best opportunities for our staff to make progress.  This is a “people business”. Customers need the confidence that we can make software reliable and relevant for them.  It was Alan Sugar who said of Amstrad Computers: “I don’t care if it’s driven by rubber bands, as long as it works.”  This makes it even more important that we keep our side of the bargain by researching, testing and developing new ideas and technologies. 

Possibilities for the future are blossoming right now.